It is well known that Kurdish tribes took part in the mass slaughter by the Ottomans of around 1m Armenians in 1915.

Human Rights Watch urged Indonesia on Wednesday to overturn Shariah laws in the conservative province of Aceh, saying the application of the legal code of Islam has resulted in widespread rights abuses.

A Syariah High Court judge suggested at a seminar in Kuantan early last month that Malaysia should criminalise black magic and introduce a law to that effect, adding that the practice of black magic was becoming rampant, especially among the Malay community.

A resolution combating the "vilification of religions" was adopted Tuesday (Nov. 23) by a United Nations committee, but religious freedom advocates who oppose the measure say support for it continues to diminish.

A new, 62-foot-tall menorah, possibly the world’s largest, rises from a mountain overlooking this Indonesian city, courtesy of the local government.

The world's cardinals met Friday in a rare Vatican summit to discuss the most pressing issues facing the church, including the sex abuse scandal, religious freedom and the conversion of Anglicans to Catholicism.

At the Sunday market in Kashgar, it isn't a wild stretch to imagine commerce as it might have been in the 13th century when Marco Polo passed through this Silk Road oasis: Smooth-faced boys wrangle with horses, sheep and camels.

The Afghan president on Tuesday urged insurgents to abandon violence and accept offers of reconciliation from the government, using the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha to issue a plea for peace.

It took years to make the United Nations' newest agency, UN Women, a reality, and then just one day to effectively kill it.

Pope Benedict XVI replied in diplomatic and general terms to a provocative letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, pledging to find common efforts for "peace and reconciliation" with the Islamic republic.

In a much-anticipated speech focusing on development, democracy and religion, President Obama sought on Wednesday to strengthen America’s ties with Indonesia, a rising Asian power with the world’s largest Muslim population.

President Obama, renewing his call for better relations between the United States and the Muslim world, used a long-awaited homecoming trip to this island nation to make a symbolic visit on Wednesday morning to the largest mosque in southeast Asia — even as he declared that “much more work needs to be done” to fulfill the promise he made 17 months ago in Cairo of a “new beginning.”

When Michelle Obama, the first lady, introduced her husband to a group of college students here on Sunday, she urged them to ask him “tough questions.”

Yin Xinhui reached the peak of Mount Yi and surveyed the chaos. The 47-year-old Taoist abbess was on a sacred mission: to consecrate a newly rebuilt temple to one of her religion’s most important deities, the Jade Emperor.

Pope Benedict XVI won the No. 5 spot in a list of the world's most powerful people, one of only two religious leaders in Forbes magazine's list of 68 influential men and women.

Comparing their struggle with America's civil rights movement, India's low-caste Dalits are urging President Obama to take note of their suffering during his state visit next week.

Iran's supreme leader wrapped up an unprecedented 10-day visit to the Iranian seminary city of Qom on Friday that was widely seen as an attempt to bolster support among those in a clerical establishment either indifferent or hostile to his conservative agenda.

Protests by Tibetan students over plans to elevate Chinese to the main language of instruction in western China schools spread Friday to Beijing, where students at a minority university staged a rare public demonstration.

China is courting the secessionist government of oil-rich southern Sudan, an apparent departure from Beijing's decades-long opposition to independence movements abroad.

Iran is secretly trying to set up banks in Muslim countries around the world, including Iraq and Malaysia, using dummy names and opaque ownership structures to skirt sanctions that have increasingly curtailed the Islamic republic's global banking activities, U.S. officials say.